


For I Look Around Me, And It Seems You’ve Found Me

by luninosity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Also Possibly Some Making Out In A Large Chair, Birthday, Birthday Presents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, James Needs Cuddles, Love Confessions, M/M, Mention of X-Men Cast, protective!Michael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 04:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in celebration of James’s birthday. James gets some unexpected and not entirely welcome news, Michael’s there to help, and first kisses--and a bit more--happen. Plus a Lord of the Rings-related present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For I Look Around Me, And It Seems You’ve Found Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title and opening lines from Alexi Murdoch’s “All My Days”; I know it’s been used in advertisements everywhere recently, but I liked it before that, okay, and it seemed to fit this story perfectly.

  
_now I see clearly, it's you I'm looking for_   
_all of my days_   
_soon I'll smile, I know I'll feel this loneliness no more_   
_all of my days_   
_for I look around me_   
_and it seems you've found me_   
_and it's coming into sight…_   


  
  
A few short weeks into filming the sequel. A beautiful day, sunny and clear and chilly with springtime. April snowdrops and murmuring breezes in the sky.  
  
And, on this beautiful April-snowdrop day, James was missing.  
  
Michael stood, baffled, in the hotel lobby. The rest of the cast had already gathered, plus a few assistant directors and production assistants; they’d finished rehearsing for the day, no actual filming, not quite yet, and the bar was open, even if it was a bit early for dinner, and discussions of day’s-end tequila shots were beginning around him.  
  
James should’ve been there. He’d come back to the hotel with them, smiling; had still been smiling when Bryan Singer’d offered to buy the first round.  
  
James needed to be there. Michael had plans.  
  
They’d only barely all gotten back together, laughing, joking, making plans for the next round of weekly pranks involving directorial megaphones and Magneto action figures and ludicrous accents. James had been right there in the thick of everything, congratulating Jennifer, teasing Sir Ian about the Gandalf beard, throwing arms around each arrival when he or she turned up, getting every single person excited about the punishing film schedule by sheer force of enthusiasm.  
  
James always was enthusiastic. About characters, about storytelling, about science fiction, about lemon-sugar cookies and the stardust origins of the universe.  
  
James was happy, in a way that made everyone around him happy as well: the kind of happiness that radiated outwards like gravity and drew everyone in around him, making them smile along too. James was beautiful; Michael’d always thought that, in a way that had nothing to do with the physical realities of summer-ocean eyes and red-gold freckles. He’d even said so, once, very drunkenly, very late at night, the wrap party after the first film, himself leaning tipsily on sturdy support as James helped him to his hotel room and tucked him into bed.  
  
James had laughed, and shaken his head; said, not exactly meeting Michael’s eyes, “You’re going to regret so much of this tomorrow morning, I can’t even make fun of you for that, as much as I want to, so we’re just going to remember that you should never try to out-drink Kevin Bacon and then say words to people, come on, bed…” Had stayed, sleeping curled up in the overstuffed chair, in order to offer coffee and aspirin and scrambled eggs in the morning. Because James was a good person. Because James was the best person Michael’d ever known, and Michael’d woken up knowing beyond doubt that he was in love with that laugh and those blue eyes, that every intoxicated word’d been the absolute unquestionable truth, and that James hadn’t believed them.  
  
And James was missing.  
  
He put out a hand, grabbed Nicholas’s arm as the owner of said arm attempted to walk past him into the bar. “Have you seen—”  
  
“Your tragic superhero soulmate? Not since we got back. I have seen Ian’s phenomenally expensive vodka, though, he’s waving it at us…”  
  
“Not now!” He let go; Nicholas sighed. “I was joking, about the soulmate thing. But, seriously, you’re actually worried?”  
  
“Yes. He’s not—he should be here. And his phone is—he didn’t answer.”  
  
“Well,” Nicholas said, logically, “have you tried his room?”  
  
Michael stared, blinked, conceded that this might be a decent point. “…thank you.”  
  
“Vodka,” Nicholas said, and wandered away. Michael bolted for the stairs.  
  
Had to be the stairs. Elevators were too slow.  
  
Three doors down, right side of the hall; the door regarded him with featureless blankness, as he hovered, heart beating faster for no easily explicable reason. When he knocked, the answer didn’t come immediately, and in the gap between noise and reply the evening got colder.  
  
“Who is it?” So familiar, that voice. Scottish lochs and sunlight and aged whiskey, shot through with amber and spice.  
  
“It’s me.”  
  
“Michael?” The door was pulled open; blue eyes looked up at him, from inches shorter than his own height. “What—sorry, come in, of course. Are you all right?”  
  
That question derailed Michael’s own; he managed, “What?”  
  
“You look…here, sit down.” James put a hand on his shoulder, pushed him into the closest chair, glanced back toward the suite’s nearly non-existent mini-kitchen. “I probably have beer in the fridge. Or there’s coffee, or, um, gummi bears…”  
  
“…gummi bears?”  
  
“I like them.” James raised eyebrows at him, inviting confidences, full of concern. Added, “You can even have the red ones, they’re my favorite, and I don’t share those with just anyone, you know…”  
  
“But,” Michael said, and then reached up and took that hand, the one on his shoulder, folding those fingers into his own. The sapphire eyes were genuinely worried, gazing at him; all that compassion was as real as ever. But there were lines around the edges, cracks in the gemstone depths, and even the normally mischievous hair seemed tired.  
  
“But,” he said again. “James. You’re up here.”  
  
“I am, yes. So’re you. Why, again? What’s going on? You know I’m here, if you need something.”  
  
“I do.” I need you, he almost said. Bit his tongue at the last possible second. “You weren’t—everyone else is downstairs, in the bar, and it’s—if you didn’t have dinner plans I was going to—James, is everything—are you—okay?”  
  
“Am _I_ —” James stopped. Bit his lip. “It’s not important. I’m only—I didn’t feel like being social. Or…I sort of do, but not really…I don’t know. I’m fine, though, you can go on without me. I did mean it about the gummi bears, though, if that’ll help.”  
  
Michael took a deep breath, and stood up, holding on to that hand in his, the one James hadn’t tried to take away despite the dismissive words. Said, with all his heart, “Please.”  
  
James looked up at him, and something in those seawater eyes trembled, something very old and raw and worn as broken shipwrecks, timbers tugged to pieces by the tide. “It’s not…I’m just…it’s _not_ important, I—”  
  
“Fuck,” Michael said, out loud, and then just took the step forward and put both arms around him, and James put his head on Michael’s shoulder and breathed shakily and let himself be held.  
  
Outside, the sun lowered, sending streaks of rose and honey, fuchsia and topaz, across the world. In the quiet anonymous hotel room, surrounded by still furniture and creamy walls, Michael kept his arms around James, and James accepted them there.  
  
After a while, feeling daring, he rested his cheek atop all the waves of hair. His heart ached, in his chest, and he couldn’t tell whether that was a bad feeling or a good one; and then he thought he might have an idea which one after all, when he felt the movement of lips, when James smiled into his chest.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Of course.” Neither of them stirred. He wondered whether James could feel the rhythm of his heartbeat, pounding away, from there. “Do you want to tell me? You don’t have to. But I’d like it if you would.”  
  
“You would?”  
  
“Yes.” He reached over and smoothed a wayward curl back into place; not even surprising, that motion. Natural. James leaned a bit more weight against him, after. “I would.”  
  
“All right…well…do you know what day it is?”  
  
“Sunday? The twenty-first of April?”  
  
“…yes. Yes, it is. Um. Never mind.”  
  
“James, stop. I’m only teasing. I know it’s your birthday.” He put both hands on James’s shoulders, then. Got the blue eyes to lift and meet his; added, while some part of his brain echoed distantly with indistinct alarm bells, “I was planning to surprise you, actually, I have a present for you, and I thought, if you wanted, I could even make dinner for you, I was going to ask if you wanted me to make you dinner, I was sort of thinking Italian because I know you like garlic bread, but anything you want, I mean that, except maybe for haggis, because I really would have no idea how, but I’d probably try if you asked, and please say something because otherwise I’m just going to keep talking.”  
  
“Oh…really, just because I’m Scottish…haggis is disgusting…you were going to make dinner for us? In…the hotel?”  
  
“I know my way around a hotel kitchen. And I’m very persuasive.”  
  
This earned a real smile, truthful and weary as the sunset. “I do like garlic bread.”  
  
“I know. You said us, just now.” He was holding his breath, for all sorts of reasons.  
  
“I did.” James smiled again, and the wrecked timbers drifted a bit more serenely amid the ocean waves, waters calming, the aftermath of the storm. “Yes.”  
  
“Can I…you look…” He stroked a hand through soft hair again, not because it needed the taming, for once, but because he liked the way it felt, the way James’s breathing changed, when he did. “I’d like to kiss you. Can I kiss you?”  
  
And that expression, enchantingly astonished and breathless and _wanting_ , fell right into Michael’s heart and left an imprint of itself, where it’d always remain, a part of his soul.  
  
“Yes,” James whispered, eyes wide. “Yes, please, _please_ —”  
  
So Michael kissed him.  
  
The world began all over again, in that second. Everything in existence, all brand new, because he’d never known anything this amazing before, and that brilliance crackled through the whole damn universe, transforming it with joy and the taste of chapstick and artificial-raspberry gummi candy and unshed tears.  
  
James kissed him with eyes open, with heart and soul laid bare for the taking, with pure honesty and emotion, nothing held back.  
  
“I love you,” Michael breathed, against just-kissed lips. He couldn’t not say it. Not faced with all that fearlessness. No more than he could’ve stopped his heart from racing.  
  
And James whispered back, “I love you, too,” still looking as astounded, as elated, as Michael himself felt, dizzy with joy.  
  
“You—” he said, just to hear it again. “You do?”  
  
“I do.” James gazed up at him, folded securely into his arms, excitement dancing hesitantly at the edges of lips, the corners of eyes. “For…years, really. I think since the first time you ever smiled at me. I don’t even remember what I said to you, something ridiculous, but it made you laugh, and then you looked at me, really at me, I mean, and you smiled…”  
  
“Oh,” Michael said, and kissed him again. “Oh, James. I love you. You never said—I never knew you wanted—”  
  
“Well, you were busy. And I was…we were both working, and every time I saw you you looked happy, and I couldn’t…if you were happy, then I could be happy. For you.”  
  
“I don’t want you to be happy for me,” Michael said, after a second, and ran a thumb over James’s eyebrow, “I don’t want you to be lonely, and say that you’re happy, ever. I want you to be happy for you. And maybe a little bit because of me, if I can make you smile—like that—again. It’s your birthday; is it a good one, yet?”  
  
An almost-laugh, at that, amused and rueful. “It is now.”  
  
“Now…you never did tell me. About earlier. Do you want to? Or…” He tried to encourage with eyes, expression, the embrace of arms; James sighed. Leaned against him. Let Michael bury one hand in his hair, and sneak the other one up under his sweater, finding hidden skin.  
  
“About being lonely…I didn’t really want to be alone, but I couldn’t… have you seen the papers, at all, today? Or the internet? Any of the news outlets. Or even the celebrity gossip sites.”  
  
“No…”  
  
“So, then…you haven’t seen it.”  
  
“Haven’t seen what? James—”  
  
“Nothing about you, or the film, or anything like that. It was just. My father. Decided to wish me a happy birthday.”  
  
“You—your father—but you don’t—” He knew James had been raised by his grandparents. Had known that not because of the occasional late-night temptation to indulge his pining heart with stealthy internet plundering, interviews and video clips, but because James had made references, casually, in conversation, as if talking about his childhood to Michael was comfortable instead of painful. James had told stories, laughing, about his sister, his grandparents; had never, not once, mentioned his father.  
  
“—speak? No, we very much don’t. Which means that he chose to express his birthday wishes by holding an interview with the most lurid tabloid magazine you can think of.”  
  
“He—oh, no, James, I’m—”  
  
“He said he was proud of me. As if he’s got any reason to be. Asked me to give him a call, sometime.” James bit his lip. Left red marks in pink skin. Michael put a hand out to cup his cheek, instinctively.  
  
“Are you—no, of course you’re not all right. I’m so sorry. And you’re right, about him and being proud of you, of course you’re right, you’re your own person, and he wasn’t—someone who’s never been there for you doesn’t have any right to say that, and—am I allowed to call him a bastard? On your behalf?” Or worse. So much worse. Anyone who could be responsible for that look in those blue eyes deserved far worse.  
  
He was aware that he was angry. Could feel it, an ice-cold building rage, under his skin. But he couldn’t do anything about it now, and James might not want that anyway, might have complicated emotions about bodily harm coming to the person who shared his DNA, and James was his priority, now and always, James in his arms and needing to be held; and so he let a careful breath out of his lungs and added, “Please say yes, because I don’t like him much right now?” and James almost-laughed again.  
  
“Yes, you can…that wasn’t actually the worst of it. Quite a few people sent me links to the story, today—”  
  
“ _Which_ people?”  
  
“Don’t make that expression. They were trying to help, to make sure I saw it, and that was a good thing, because my agent called, because I needed to make some sort of statement in reply—”  
  
At this point Michael said several words that were extremely impolite and physically improbable. The listening hotel furniture didn’t blush, but only because it couldn’t.  
  
“What did you say? I mean—you don’t have to tell me, if—”  
  
“The truth. That it’s like getting birthday wishes from a stranger. I don’t know him, he doesn’t know me, it’s nice that he feels the desire to say something, but I’m not going to call him. Not part of my life.” James put his head back on Michael’s shoulder; Michael said, “Sit down?” and tugged him down onto the chair, more specifically onto Michael’s lap on the chair, where they both fit perfectly.  
  
He could hold James like this, he thought, forever. And then he thought, I might get to, and found himself struck breathless by joy.  
  
“What’re you thinking? You look…surprised.”  
  
“I’m happy. Not because of this—what you’re telling me, I mean, I very definitely want to meet him, sometime, and kick him somewhere painful for you—”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“—but you feel good here. Like this.” He tightened his arms around James, and James didn’t try to resist, only settled more comfortably against him.  
  
“I’m happy like this, too. So, anyway, I wasn’t…I’ve not been up here sobbing my eyes out, or anything, I meant it when I said he’s not part of my life, I just…” A small expressive shrug, or what would’ve been a shrug if Michael’s arms had been around him less firmly. “And then you were here. Like everything I’d ever wanted, offering me garlic bread. And it just all sort of…”  
  
“I know. I’m sorry. Not sorry I was here—never, about that, and I’ll always be here if you want me—but sorry you had one more thing to deal with. I love you. I do. And I’m not leaving you, not now, not ever, I won’t do that to you. I promise, all right?”  
  
“You…that’s not…that’s not a promise you can—not forever, you can’t know—”  
  
“James,” Michael said, and caught his chin with one hand, so that those eyes looked directly into his own, “yes. I can.”  
  
James drew a single uneven breath, not quite a sob, and nodded, tentatively at first and then, as Michael didn’t look away, with real agreement, dawning in those eyes as well, and then leaned forward. And all at once they were kissing again, fierce and joyful and wild, exultation like fireworks, flinging brilliant colors across the dark, vivid and free.  
  
“I love you,” James was saying, over and over, into the kiss; “I know,” Michael said back, “I know you do, I love you, I know,” and tried to kiss James everywhere, every inch of delightfully freckled skin, cream and ginger and happiness to his exploring tongue.  
  
“Michael,” James said, “ _Michael_ ,” and Michael paused to murmur “James McAvoy” and “I love you” into an ear, and James gasped and shivered in very satisfactory ways, on his lap.  
  
“You like me saying your name?” He’d have to remember that one. “James?”  
  
“Oh, god,” James said, “yes, please, yes,” and Michael slid a hand up his thigh—paused to glance at welcoming eyes—and found something else extremely interesting and interested, James wanting him, already hard and hot even through the rough fabric of jeans, and he wanted, too, had been wanting for so long, and he set his hand over James’s cock and rubbed, slowly. James groaned and tipped his head back, and suddenly Michael was tremendously aware of his own arousal, the friction and sensation as James moved and squirmed under his hands, over his lap, over his cock, pressed insistently into James’s hip.  
  
And that was thoroughly unfair, he couldn’t be that close already, couldn’t be about to come in his pants, fully dressed, from nothing but the weight and scent and taste of James in his arms, or at least not unless he could get James off that way too, both of them equally impatient; so he fumbled open the zipper of James’s jeans, clumsy with need, and found him there, flushed and thick and made for Michael’s hand, already eager and wet with it, and all those inches of him were beautiful too, pushing up into Michael’s grip through open jeans and shorts, and Michael stroked him once, twice, three times, cock sliding through his fingers, and James gasped his name and came, arching up against him, white-hot climax spilling over Michael’s hand, those jeans, his own stomach.  
  
The sound of that gasp, his name in James’s ecstasy-roughened voice, filled his ears, and, abruptly, Michael felt himself coming too, no finesse at all, just the sudden overwhelming flood of brightness, pushing him over the edge into infinite sweetness as his cock pulsed with release against the curve of James’s hip.  
  
James, who’d had a few more seconds to recover, managed to lift his head while Michael was still collecting air and wondering when the world might stop sparkling. Smiled at him, sapphire blue unfurling like open seas, horizonless and inviting the next adventure. Beloved.  
  
“So,” James said, still a little breathless, and Michael managed, weakly, “Happy birthday?” and James began laughing, sprawled happily over him in the accommodating chair.  
  
They might have to buy that chair. It could come with them, wherever they went. He wondered how much it might cost.  
  
That train of thought led to another. “James?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“I still have a birthday present for you.”  
  
“You do?” James obviously contemplated sitting up, then equally obviously decided it was too much effort. Michael got an arm around his shoulders, and maneuvered them into a slightly more comfortable long-term position. “This wasn’t enough?”  
  
“No.” One more kiss, now that those lips were close enough. “You remember you said in an interview that you’d want to play a young Gandalf, someday, if you could…”  
  
“I…did say that…what did you do?”  
  
“Asked Ian for Alan Lee’s phone number and called him at odd hours until he agreed to send over an original watercolor for your birthday?”  
  
“You…what?”  
  
“It’s in my room. In my suitcase, actually, in an envelope that says Ferrari on the front.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Um…just in case you ever came in and looked around?”  
  
“Really,” James said again, grinning now, “so you were imagining me, looking around your room…me in your room…”  
  
“I love you?”  
  
“Best birthday ever,” James said, with unshakeable conviction, “and I love you, too.”


End file.
